From the category archives:

History and the Law

And you are…who again?

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Echoes of History

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By David Reynolds
2009 is a good year for anniversaries. 200 years since the birth of Abraham Lincoln; 20 years since the Berlin Wall came down. In a strange way, I think, Abe and the Wall are linked.
In 1858 Lincoln picked up the biblical injunction that “a house divided against itself cannot stand” and [...]

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The Information Master

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By Jacob Soll

How do you build an effective police state?  Louis XIV’s famous minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619-1683) knew that well-paid scholars potentially make effective and sometimes brutal intelligence agents.
He also knew they had the requisite skills to make state surveillance systems.  With their knowledge of law, feudal history and archival practices, Colbert trained a number of [...]

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